Football is king on Thanksgiving Day. From traditional high school matchups to NFL games, there are few holidays as connected to a sport in this country.

Thanksgiving also serves as an important marker for our winter sports. In the NHL, it’s a line of demarcation that tells us if a team is a legitimate playoff contender. Over the past 13 seasons, 75 percent of the teams that were holding onto a playoff spot on Thanksgiving Day went on to play in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

As an aside, hockey is the only sport that feels a need to differentiate between Thanksgiving here and the lesser known version held north of the border in October. That holiday is far too early to serve as a harbinger of anything. Plus, it’s on a Monday. Hard to be thankful at the start of a work week, eh?

I digress. The Bruins are not very thankful for injuries to Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara, two cornerstone players who will be out for a month or longer. With additional injuries to Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo, the Bruins have been playing short-handed most of the season.

Yet they have managed to keep their heads above water. They took the ice in Toronto on Monday night with a five-game point streak and the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference. Trouble is, they’re also in fourth place in the Atlantic Division. The Atlantic is the deepest in the NHL at this point, evidenced by the fact that the Bruins would be in first if they played in the Metropolitan.

They don’t, which means it’s going to be tough to jockey for home-ice advantage in the playoffs. The good news is they have some nice little rivalries going once again. The 2-1 win Saturday night in Montreal had an old-time hockey feel to it, with big hits, a blown lead and a late power-play goal for the win. There were battles after the whistle, obligatory shots of an unhappy Claude Julien, and terrific goaltending from Tuukka Rask.

That’s been the biggest development for the Bruins of late: The goaltending has been outstanding once again. Rask is back from a three-day absence for a personal matter and appears locked in and ready to lead this team again. We’ve seen him do that for months at a time in the past. This season, he’s part of a tandem with Jaroslav Halak that should allow Bruce Cassidy to keep Rask’s workload at a reasonable level. That could pay dividends in April.

The goalies will have to be at their best while Chara and McAvoy are out. Kevan Miller returned last week to help stabilize the defense, and John Moore’s first goal as a Bruin was the winner Saturday night in Montreal. The good news is that the Bruins should be deeper than planned when all the defensemen return. There’s valuable ice time and experience being gained in the absence of Chara, McAvoy and Carlo.

The same is happening up front, where Jake DeBrusk has found his scoring touch again, and unexpected contributors like Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson and Joakim Nordstrom have helped fill the void in Bergeron’s absence.

Forsbacka Karlson was a complete player at Boston University but has been slow to fit in with the speed and intensity of the NHL level. That’s starting to change, although he hasn’t found his footing in the faceoff circle just yet. The increased playing time he’s getting right now will serve as a crash course in development. He’ll be better for it.

All in all, Cassidy has to feel good about the way this group has responded to the challenge of losing its best forward and best defenseman. It’ll be weeks before either Bergeron or Chara return, but for now, the Bruins have stepped up with a strong group effort.

In the end, this team won’t be judged by where it stood on Thanksgiving. The final grade will be given in April. There’s a lot of hockey to play in the meantime, and it will take continued contributions from everyone on the roster if we’re going to give this team thanks next spring.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.

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